1,720,964 research outputs found
Ricostituzione dell'immunità cellulare CMV-specifica nel trapianto di organo solido
Full text linkBackground: Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) represents a common cause of morbidity and mortality in solid organ transplant (SOT) patients. The CMV specific cell-mediated immunity recovery plays an important role in reducing the harmful effects of CMV infection.
In this study we comared the recovery of cell-mediated immunity CMV-specific twith the ELISpot assay in adult patients undergoing SOT (heart, kidney and liver), in order to standardize the diagnostic and therapeutic process and be able to make therapy tailored based on the individual level of risk of infection.
Methods: Observations from 209 adult patients undergoing SOT (47 hearts,102 kidneys 60 livers) during the first year 6 after transplantation. The parameters examined were: ELISpot test, CMV-DNA by PCR Real Time, CMV-IgG and IgG-avidity.
Results: 1) in kidney transplants the recover of cell-mediated immunity CMV-specific is slower than hearts and livers; 2) the recovery of cell-mediated immunity CMV-specific is slower in patients CMV R-; 3) humoral immunity plays a marginal role in the control of infection by CMV.
Conclusion: the use of ELISpot assay could help identify patients at risk of CMV infection and optimize their treatment, avoiding cases of late infection
Thymoma-associated renal pathology: Is renal biopsy always necessary? A clinical problem-solving exercise and teaching example for physicians.
No full textThymomas, although rare tumors, are the most common tumor in the anterior mediastinum [1]. Kidney manifestations appear in 1–2% of patients affected or undergoing thymectomy, and include a wide range of kidney disease patterns (minimal change disease, membranous nephropathy, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, extra-capillary proliferating glomerulonephritis and thrombotic microangiopathy). Membranous nephropathy is typically associated with epithelial-predominant thymoma and minimal change disease with lymphocyte-predominant thymoma [2, 3]. Literature reports very few cases of a nephropathy recovering or improving after the treatment of a concomitantly diagnosed thymoma, and in all these cases, a renal biopsy was performed for pathological correlation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Single Center Contribution to the Recurrence Rate and Treatment Options of Post-transplant Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis
No full textBackground. Post-transplant Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) recurrence, the third cause of graft failure in the first year, and its treatment still remains an open challenge. Available evidence reports different approaches both to primary FSGS and post-transplant recurrence but optimal therapeutic management has not been established. This retrospective study aimed to analyze in a monocentric cohort of kidney transplanted patients those with primary FSGS to establish the post-transplant recurrence rate of FSGS and its treatment. Patients and Methods. 2816 kidney transplanted patients at Padova University Hospital from 1995 to 2023 were retrospectively evaluated to identify those with pretransplant primary FSGS, establish the recurrence rate of post-transplant FSGS and the adopted treatment. Results. 20 patients out of 2816 had pretransplant primary FSGS and in 5 of them post-transplant recurrences of FSGS were observed (25%). In these patients, immunosuppression regimens with tacrolimus/mycophenolate mofetil/corticosteroids were the most used (75%). Plasmapheresis was used in 4 recurrences and one patient was also treated with rituximab. Conclusions. Optimal management of FSGS recurrence after transplantation is not yet established while evidence regarding the positive effect of current treatment strategies is very little and limited by a very low number of well-designed randomized trials. Although with limitations, our study might be considered as a further contribution to the limited number of available studies on the still open challenge of identifying the most effective management to reduce/prevent post-transplant FSGS recurrence and provide its best treatment
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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